Monday, December 8

Coffee Break

The local pop-culture art gallery ZaPow! recently opened a heroine-themed show (you have to pronounce that very carefully in conversation). As a ZaPow artist for almost a year now, I jumped at the idea and wanted to make a Wonder Woman image. But she was yoinked by a few quicker folks, and I quickly let that notion fade. Dang it.

Instead I decided to make a short original comic as a piece of art, and I remembered a sketch I did in July 2013 of a coffee break between fight scenes.

I thought it would be more accessible if I used the two lead heroines from the year's big comic movies, Captain America: Winter Solider and Guardians of the Galaxy. What if they had a breather between waves of Avengers-level invaders?

I started noodling the idea while waiting at a car dealership and quickly came up with the story skeleton. I had some ideas of specific speech and a general idea of the conversation flow. Nothing was locked in yet.

Then I thumbnailed the script. I didn't know if the story should be three or four pages, and that would be determined by the frame. Submissions for themed shows have to fit certain dimensions, so that required the pages to ultimately be at the size of a printed comic (6.75 x 10.25) instead of the original art size of 11 x 17. The frame also required the comic to be three pages instead of four. This was no big deal to adjust at this point.

When the size was locked in, I penciled on letter-size pages; two such pages combined equal 11 x 17.

I scanned those pages and reduced them to the finished-art size, printed them, and inked over them on bristol board with a lightbox. I also used those scans to start the lettering while I colored the pages with Spectrum Noir warm and cold gray markers.

I then printed the word balloons on sticker paper, cut them out with scissors and much profanity, and adhered them over the color pages. I usually don't work this way, but I wanted to give the comic the appeal of mixed media art. And there it was.